I visited the on-going exhibition of Italian art from The Royal Collection at the Queen's Gallery at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh today. They have a very new, very pleasing little gallery there - and if you fill out a form when you buy your ticket it's valid for unlimited visits for a year, so I was able to see this Baroque part of the exhibition without paying again, having been to the Mannerist part in the summer. The whole gallery is very well done, with an audio guide that doesn't presume you know nothing about the paintings, an exhibition space that is small enough so that you can take everything in and digest it, but not so small that you feel short changed by the number of works. The website also has all the pictures with the facility to look at them in detail. I'll always go and see a Caravagio and there was the newly restored Calling of Sts Peter and Andrew, along side an impressive small figure by Annibale Carrachi, that looks almost modern, perhaps 18th century, almost like a Manet or something. Plus I finally got to see Artemisia Gentileschi's well known self-portrait, remarkable as one of the few female artists of the age. There was also a couple of works by her father, Orazio Gentileschi who was a court painter for Charles I. I avoided the National Galleries today, what with all the fuss over the Titians... Maybe the Queen could step in and cough up...and make a permanent exhibit of her collection?
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